 Actually upon workers comp, it's not unimportant, but it pales in comparison in terms of what we did last year on UI. Can you could, I guess it would be you commissioner. Can you tell us what we did last year and what, I know there wasn't a great deal of uptake, but where, what the status of some of those cases are, I know there was some teachers that did use the law and why we wouldn't want to continue a policy like that this year. Yeah, so I'm probably not the best person to speak to this, but just so among the three you are, right. Well, and just so folks on the committee know our long time workers compensation director Stephen Monaghan retired this past year, and Dirk Anderson, who was the department's general counsel, decided to make a career change and moved into workers compensation. He's now pulling double duty while we look for a new general counsel. And I'm sure we can, we can schedule a time to have him come on and speak about the program to what you're you are mentioning, Senator for for the others on the committee. So there was a presumption that was passed, essentially saying that if an individual came down with COVID and needed to leave work, there was a presumption which meant the burden was on the employer to prove that the infection or contraction of the virus didn't occur at the workplace that presumption ended. And so it shifted the burden back to the employee, which is typical in most cases of workers compensation where the burden then was on the employee to prove that them contracting the virus happened in the workplace again either by way of, you know, someone not following safety protocol or needing to work in a confined space with someone else who you know became COVID positive again, there's a variety of different reasons there. And I honestly I couldn't tell you what off the top of my head what the cases looked like when we had the presumptions in place. But they did expire, I believe, sometime late summer so you know we can certainly have Dirk and myself come back in and share more details on that. When you do come, we'll do that probably. Scheduling is already getting hard but when you do that, could you also have Dirk give us the reasons why for a small group of people, I think it is small, why we wouldn't continue, what's different this time around from last year where we debated that policy and decided to give the workers the benefit of the presumption. We'll come back with that one. So, we're getting back to Thanks. You're somewhat inadvertently making the case for paid leave but I wanted to ask you if you could come back maybe I don't know who the right person to ask is I remember when we had the debate about paid family leave, there was an issue about just how many people already had protection in the workforce for themselves through disability insurance and whether paid leave was duplicating that for the individual not for their kid or their parent but for the individual and whether that was even as perhaps a stronger benefit. I am interested in not quite letting go of this if there is some way to provide some income protection here similar to I mean I certainly don't want to see opening the door to 90,000 people but it does seem fairly analogous. I accept a lot of the points you've made but that doesn't mean within those points there aren't still some people who are falling through the cracks and I'm wondering if we could define it it may not be worth it administratively it may not be worth it for the short term but and I don't know whether there are other places for people to go certainly people who are low income and need maybe they can go to general assistance or some other thing that's a terrible option I think. So I don't know if you want to respond commissioner with more given what Senator Clarkson has very articulately said as to what the similarities to last year I don't have anything more to add on the topic right now I'm happy to further the conversation we can try to find some additional information that may support the committee's position so happy to follow up. You know do have you heard in your circles anywhere any other state looking at this whether it be through UI or I mean some states have paid leave so probably that takes care of it but there's not that many states that have paid leave you know maybe 10 or 15 so I'm wondering if any other states are looking at reopening some of the opportunities under UI or other kinds of programs because it does seem like people are having to stop work. I'm happy to pose I have not personally I'm happy to pose the question to our National Association but I defer to Cameron as the director to see whether he's aware of any. Very quickly I'm not aware of anything either commissioner I would do the same just you know maybe pose it to the National Association and see if there are any other I haven't heard anything from any counterparts in the region or anything like that. Mr. Chair I'll take the quick opportunity to correct what I said earlier you were correct there is a one to six week disqualification for individuals who do separate if they quit because of a medical disqualification so once they clear the medical disqualification they're able to go back to work they would have to serve at least a one week disqualification period you know we haven't necessarily had a conversation internally about it so I haven't had any cases come to my desk but I imagine we would want to be very you know empathetic in those situations given the circumstance and impose a very minimal disqualification in that event so just wanted to clarify that. I'll just ask the obvious question there's very reason why we couldn't at least eliminate that one week. Right. I would want to circle up with the commissioner and with Dirk and talk I don't know I wouldn't be comfortable saying right now it's something we would be prohibited from doing so definitely something we would want to look at I know the commissioner who's here saying you know we would want to be very if we had that ability I imagine we would exercise it. Good. I wanted to ask a question let's we're definitely going to have you back and we're going to end today at eleven fifteen because I want to have some committee time so we don't have a lot of time. Tell us if there's things you want to tell us about what you've been up to and what you're what you have on your agenda for this year of legislative asks and then I want to go see if we can touch briefly on the UI task force and what your response to that report is I've tried to give you in advance the list of issues that we would be talking about here. So thank you senator so when we look at our policy portfolio for this year obviously most of you probably heard the governor's remarks the other day big emphasis on workforce development workforce expansion but also and recognition that workforce and workforce vitality is every everyone's responsibility across all of state government everything from you know community health to thriving schools safe neighborhoods affordable affordability and available housing so we when we talk about our workforce initiatives they're really geared towards training and development and moving people individuals either out of who are at a transition point maybe graduating from high school or graduating from college or returning to the state helping to move them forward or moving people into different industry tracks in terms of training opportunities so we have two proposals that are currently under development and well I can't give all the details because they're still being reviewed at the governor's level one does focus on workforce and work-based training and learning so on the job training internships return ships apprenticeships and how to bolster those programs and then the other one looks at helping individuals to navigate through the workforce system so again collaboration between maybe local workforce committees or boards educational institutions training facilities to help individuals navigate and build those pipelines in those key industries or sectors that we're all familiar with so those are the two primary ones I'm sure there'll be more under workforce we also have two modernization efforts well three if you count the Vermont job link program so obviously unemployment insurance modernization which we're all familiar with we're also needing to replace our ailing FARS system which is our fiscal accounting system for truing up between our federal programs and the states accounting system that's gone through some significant failures and challenges over the past two years and we saw that again this year which delays the entire states close out of quarters and fiscal years because our system again has challenges when it comes to finalizing year end or quarter end reports we've had a lot of downtime with that system that requires significant technology professionals working on it for significant amounts of time so we're looking to replace that the other one is the Vermont Vermont job link and enhancements around that so I think we're all you may all be familiar and I'm happy to have Sarah Buxton our workforce development director come in with job link I will say I'm amazed by the transformation that job link has gone through since maybe 2017-2018 there was a data breach back then if you all remember but also it was a very clunky system it was not user friendly for job seekers it was not user friendly for employers they've now gone through a complete redo of job link and that's through American Job Center Alliance or AJLA and so the look the tone the feel the functionality is completely different we are going through an RFP process though to ensure that we have a lot of bidding on whatever Vermont's future system will be but also there are enhancements that can be made with the VJL system that helps it cross talk to other state systems that would be helpful again for the coordination of workforce development efforts I think one interesting point of note that I think you'll all be surprised because it's not a great number to have but it does show the amazing work of our team in connecting with employers prior to the pandemic I would say there was you know maybe a couple thousand open jobs posted in job link I would fair to say that it's represented less than 25% of the jobs that were in the market at any given time and that was just because it was so not user friendly based on the amazing work of the workforce development team and our outreach to employers and their participation and willingness to participate Vermont Job Link has about 20,000 jobs in it right now almost 14,000 of which are Vermont specific jobs so we do pick up obviously some jobs from neighboring states but 14,000 Vermont jobs are posted in job link which means the supply is so great that it is driving demand from job seekers to go there because they know they can find a majority of the jobs that are available again not a good problem to have with so many available jobs but I would say it probably represents anywhere from 60 to 75% of the available jobs in the market right now which is a good thing Thank you for that I'm just curious is your eiling computer system able to deal with all those upgrades on job link because I assume that's run through your mainframe system It's actually run through a third party vendor so we are part of a consortium so it's a web based program that you're coordinating with I'd have to pull the list I think the core system was developed by Kansas the state of Kansas so I'll have to pull the list of I think there's probably six or seven other states They were one of our partners were they not one of our partners originally on the mainframe modernization I don't believe so I guess the question I have is you said that before we only had about 20 we only job link only represented about 25% of the available jobs what does the 20,000 jobs that are posted on it now represent how significant a growth of representing the jobs that are available Yeah it's some loose math only because what I'm thinking in my head is our LMI division they can identify the number of available jobs now again it's a you know it's not down to the science but it's based on an aggregate and so we believe there's about 25,000 available jobs in Vermont so if we have 14,000 posted on job link we're roughly at about 60 to 70% I hate to ask this question but I'm going to because I have a modest self-interest and indeed as our son works for Indeed how do you compete with Indeed as a go-to place for Vermont people wanting to be employed how does job link and I guess I'd say why is it necessary given all the job search engines we have elsewhere I hate to ask but it's fine so I'll speak from a very high level then we can have Sarah come in and correct anything I say you know job link the state has used job link I think for the past 15 years plus and so but again through very different iterations the unique thing about job link for us as a system is that it performs three distinct functions so the first is the job board right so employers post their jobs job seekers can go on submit resumes it also functions as our case management system so all of our case work that we do with job seekers goes through Vermont job link and then finally in the end it also functions as our federal recording and accounting system and so we do use the system to derive reports for our quarterly federal requirements so in the end we may end up with a system or two systems you know depending on what the RFP looks like and who the bidders are I there was a point too to your point that some of those and I again this is why I would need Sarah to provide some insight maybe at a later date is there was a point where we were also cross matching or doing some level of scraping of jobs across indeed or there was some integrated component with indeed whether that still exists today I don't know but again to your point if we're talking about ease of use for the job seeker or the employer to have to post your job on five different job boards or submit your resume through five different job boards but I think what we do know is that there certainly is no wrong with the employer so certainly having more options available for job seeker is not necessarily a bad thing Senator Rom Hinsdale I'd like to read from an email I received yesterday because I feel like this is what I'm hearing a lot if it's okay I have a parent child center in Milton that includes child care for children ages zero to five each time a child develops the sniffles we have to send them home to parents who cannot afford to take time off work who then are struggling to find a place to get a PCR test and then have to wait sometimes as long as three days for it to come back negative so the child can return to our care but if we don't do this it's COVID we risk infecting a whole classroom and needing to shut down for families who aren't sick because we have staff who are ill this is causing parents to lose their jobs and then they cannot pay for childcare so then they lose their spot because we can't hold it for them because our margins are thin so then how will this parent get back into the workforce and what is to become of the family in the meantime the vaccines are powerful but the state of emergency is not over for families with young children and the child care centers that try to stay open for them I'm looking for a sense of what percentage of the of people who are reaching out to you who are going into unemployment are facing this situation and how you're collaborating with other departments and agencies to deal with this holistic issue for families it's not as easy as a job link or you know helping them with a form this is what families are facing and it requires a holistic interagency approach and I'm wondering what your part in that is well I don't want to say the issue doesn't exist it obviously does if the question is what am I receiving or what is our unemployment insurance division receiving you know just straight up it's very minimal so we are not seeing people who are losing their jobs due to covid except for again a very small percentage of the claims that are coming in to our unemployment insurance division personally there's a place for them to report that without having to give that information just offer up that information they would need to apply and as they're applying for unemployment they would be indicating what their reason was for separation and then you know we needed to adjudicate or do additional fact finding on the claim we could also ask clarifying questions at that point I'm also just you know when comparing to the pandemic of previous so 2020 and 2021 where I was seeing a large number of emails and communications either to me directly through the governor's office constituent management system or from legislators directly that has dropped off considerably as well so where I was seeing maybe dozens a day I see maybe a couple a week and usually they're not covid related so what we are into covid related in this instance is that a separate category well again I'm not seeing any that would be specific we know childcare is an issue if the if the reason for not being able to go back to work is childcare related I would have to ask Cameron that but I'm not hearing from what I'm receiving that that is the reason for separations at this point what I see predominantly as someone who's you know challenged with how long the process is taking to process their claim but I'm not hearing from that point whether or not there are I'll use covid loosely in that there are covid or covid derived issues causing people to need to file for an appointment I don't think that answers your question about what are we doing or how are we helping these folks I'm just answering the question about what we're hearing and I'll let Cameron jump in as well from what he's hearing so I think from a holistic approach the governor and the governor's cabinet is keenly aware of everything from whether it's the childcare shortage the issue that individuals are having finding childcare which is also a very predominant issue so it's it's not just you know did my childcare facility close down due to covid but there were there were facilities or places that closed permanently due to covid and making our childcare shortage even even worse than it was before or healthcare industry workers and the shortage there so we are very aware of that I think that's where you'll see also a lot of the work that's been done to help shorten or address the extensive testing that's going on and the regime that's going on or also the quarantine and isolation period that being said the only I shouldn't say the only way the way we can help people the most is when they reach out to us because we don't necessarily have an indicator every time someone needs to leave their work or work remotely to take care of their child who's out of school or out of childcare but we do have a number of opportunities available through our workforce development division to help those folks from a you know what we are finding is that employers are offering much more flexibility in terms of allowing people to work from home or telework on a short term basis but again that doesn't include those individuals that are maybe paid by the hour that again if they have to take a week off then that is a week without work and a week without income but I think we're all familiar with to Senator Sorokin's point it's not the ideal circumstance but there are many different resources out there for those folks from a workforce perspective obviously there's less of an ability to help those folks because they're out of work for a reason but if that work is not available to them when their child recovers or when they find out that a positive test really wasn't a positive test and can go back to work if they don't have work available to them then we would step in and can provide direct support to them in finding other employment. I think what we do know is that based on our unemployment rate there are roughly 25,000 people collecting unemployment we're at an all-time low for unemployment rate in Vermont and there are 25,000 available jobs so there are way more jobs than there are individuals who are unemployed across all sectors all industries and even again to the point about minimum wage that I know was on the agenda as well we're also finding way more opportunities for job seekers who maybe working a minimum wage job and would like to increase their income and there are now many more jobs that were minimum wage prior to the pandemic that are now paying far above minimum wage so again I don't know if that answers your question I'm happy to keep going but that goes to my earlier point about income protection I mean this is why we need to look at these you know and I think Casey's point is a good one coordinating all the resources in state government to protect people to continue to protect people during this pandemic because for reasons that they have nothing to do with they are impacted by this by COVID and their wages are impacted and their work is maybe jeopardized or not but their income is definitely jeopardized if they're not working they're not protected by paid family if they're not protected by lots of other things so I think we really that's the lens I think we really need to be looking at is how do we... I would also say I mean it's outside my wheelhouse but when we look at the entire landscape of services available I mean we do provide as a state you know rental assistance and other housing assistance we do provide food assistance there is some other work assistance or I should say other ancillary costs relief for folks so that way they aren't feeling like you know where we can provide relief loosens up maybe their income in other areas. Yeah but as you know the challenge is immediacy in terms of some of those take time. I think the other piece too though I mean if we're talking about timing as well we all know unemployment is not like you are unemployed one day and you receive your benefits the next day right so if we're talking about a short period of time of maybe five days or 10 days while someone isolates gets a negative test and is able to go back to work they're likely to be back at work before they even receive their first benefit check depending so again to your point it doesn't speak to the need in the moment of saying I'm now out of work for 10 days how am I going to pay my bills or put food on my family. Psychologically the fact that they may be getting money a week later is going to be very helpful to them even if I don't know. Sure yeah. Let's we're going to continue with this future hearings but there's a couple of things I'd like to accomplish in the next 25 minutes we did have a UI task force this summer and they made a couple of recommendations I'd like Damien to briefly like in 10 minutes or so walk us through and have the commissioner or others respond to what was suggested in that report I don't think there's anything really earth-shattering in it but I'm not sure where we have to take some action I do have a bill coming in on UI where we can use as a vehicle for any ideas we want to add to it and we'll talk a little bit more about that too. So Damien take it away. Great thank you so the UI study committee report has been sent to the committee already too so for more detail you can refer to that report the UI study committee looked at a few different things the first thing was what's sort of the appropriate balance for the trust fund to maintain its solvency. The study committee found that the trust fund is generally healthy but because of their limitations they only had three meetings and five very large topics to cover they couldn't determine a specific goal balance for the trust fund so their recommendation is really to use the sort of background research provided by the report which looks at how you determine sort of target balance based on USDOL's recommendations and how other states have approached this as well as our sort of historic experience with the trust fund since we made the changes that we did after the 2008 recession and then use that in conjunction with the annual trust fund report that's going to be coming out soon and kind of make an assessment there as to how quickly we're recovering and how high our balance got before and then determine if changes need to be made with all of these things I think just an underlying theme is that we are significantly limited in what we can accomplish now because of the mainframe system so there are certain levers that we can easily pull in the context of the mainframe and there are a number of levers that we might like to pull but which the mainframe can't accommodate so some of this is and the report goes into this more there are a number of sort of considerations that need to be taken into account which it would just take too long to go over this morning. The next thing the study committee looked at was the unemployment insurance benefits adequacy and as all of you are familiar with we had the determination by the USDOL that the $25 additional benefit that this committee worked with the house to pass last biennium was out of conformance with the federal requirements so the committee reviewed potential options for getting that money out to claimants including creating a separate funding stream which is something that would be permissible for increasing the minimum or creating a minimum benefit or increasing the maximum benefit both of which have potential complications with the mainframe system but it didn't come to a final recommendation on any of those but it did sort of provide the groundwork that this committee could then take up in considering ways to move forward. One thing that the committee did include is that the current formula doesn't provide adequate benefits to low income claimants however the mainframe restricts us from really addressing that issue at this time in a meaningful manner and so the main takeaway from this was that whenever the new system is finally implemented it needs to be designed and put together in a way that can allow it to implement changes to the benefits formula to allow the benefits to be better targeted and perhaps more flexible depending on for example the state of the economy or perhaps we want to create a progressive benefit the study committee looked at a number of different options and again because of the limitations on the mainframe and time it just didn't follow on a specific recommendation but recommended further work particularly in the context of the replacement for the mainframe and designing that properly. The next two things the committee looked at were the issue of disqualifications for UI fraud and the issue of liability for overpayments of benefits with both of these the recommendation is to consider the committee's work and potential options in concert with the auditor's report on UI fraud and collection of overpayments two things the committee recommended we're going to hear from those consultants next week such as so the committee knows that two things the committee recommended that the legislature do further work on are the possibility of allowing the period of disqualification and or allowing for a waiver of a period of disqualification under certain circumstances the auditor's report has similar recommendations in it and of course there are a number of administrative considerations that come along with those the other thing that the committee recommended was the legislature consider allowing individuals to petition for reconsideration within one year after the term determination that fraud occurred and this was going towards the concern that some individuals don't really understand what's happening at that point or may not be in a position to file an appeal in a timely manner and so this would give them an additional opportunity to say there was information here that wasn't considered or something like that and the one year timeline is consistent with the other reconsideration provisions that are currently in the UI law with the overpayment issue the committee recommended in this case that the legislature enact legislation that allows the commissioner to apply liability for overpayments when a claimant is without fault and when requiring repayment would be contrary to equity and good conscience so those are two separate things that the committee looked at the first is the without fault piece and the second is the when it would be contrary to equity and good conscience there was some question as to whether it should be a waiver or both combined together but the general conclusion from the committee was that we do input a waiver for those purposes and then that the specifics can get worked out in the legislation and this would be consistent with what other states have done although the standards vary a bit from state to state the federal standard is that both without fault and in addition requiring repayment would be contrary to equity and good conscience but that's the requirement for federal benefits so we could potentially do something slightly different for state benefits but we'd have to do it with the knowledge that if there's a federal overpayment they'd be subject to a different standard so the possibility there is to align with the federal standard and have one standard or possibly to have a slightly different state standard the next subject and the final subject that was in the committee's charge is the issue of reimbursable nonprofit employers again the committee did not have a specific recommendation again because of time constraints the committee needed to get sufficient testimony so the committee's recommendation is that the general assembly needs to develop a better understanding of why nonprofits elect to become reimbursable employers in the first place and then whether they actually understand the potential risks that come with that because it's when you're a reimbursable employer you're not paying regular taxes you're not paying a firm recurring cost but when you have a bill come due for unemployment benefits it can often be a very significant amount particularly if you have more than one layoff in a period and that can be crippling for a small nonprofit with a tight budget some nonprofits there was some discussion about how to get a really good sense of what the approaches are and how many nonprofits that elect this actually understand the potential risks the other thing the committee recommended is that the general assembly should examine requiring a bond for nonprofits that elect reimbursable status some states do this and it essentially ensures that if they've run out of funding for that reason there's money sitting there that can pay the UI benefits and reimburse the trust fund for those benefits and a number of states require that for reimbursable employers and then the final piece from the committee was that the committee agreed that all employers should be covered by the UI law and whereas Vermont currently exempts nonprofit employers with fewer than four employees however the committee also agreed that the general assembly needs to develop a better understanding of what the potential impacts would be on those small nonprofits if we required coverage and so recommended more testimony on that and what we struggled with was the lack of information we have about how many small nonprofits there are how many employees are within that group and it recommended that the general assembly work with the department ADS and the secretary of state to explore options for just developing better data tools so that we actually have a better understanding when we're crafting policy and how many people would be affected by any policy that we adopt the final thing that the committee recommended was that the general assembly should generally advocate for a new UI computer system in which every variable can be adjusted easily without the risk of crippling the whole program through a catastrophic systems crash also a system that allows us to easily implement both short and long-term changes to meet the varying needs of the state so for example with the pandemic we've experienced a number of short-term changes that we either needed to implement or would have liked to implement whether that's in response to a federal requirement or the needs of Vermont employees and then we've also encountered the needs of our state here in 2022 are very different than they were in 1983 and 1986 when the current tax structure and benefit structure was first put into the system and of course we're all very familiar with the issues with having a 40 to 50 year old program here where the people who actually programmed it are all no longer with state government and there's no documentation of the changes they made back in the 1980s that could guide a current programmer in trying to figure out how to make changes to those changes within the system so that was sort of a general theme with the study committee just that as we modernize we have to do it with an eye to being flexible in the future so that the department and the legislature can work together to implement changes and adjust to the varying needs. Did I leave anything out Mr. Chair? That's great, thank you Damien. So we have about 12 minutes before we're going to break Commissioner do you want to respond to anything that Damien said or that's in the report at this point? At this point I'll go ahead. No I'd just like to tag on we all want an update on the mainframe and ARPA money because we've all heard you're getting a lot of money to fix you know to replace the mainframe so where are you? So on the report I think having it just been posted this week I think we'd like an opportunity to go through it. And I'm looking at Cameron he can't tell I'm looking at him but if he has anything you'd like to add but I'm assuming you know we'd like to go through the report and then come back with some well thought out remarks. You know having been on the committee and the task force I don't really my assessment is there's not anything really or shattering there. I would appreciate like within a week's time if you can just get us a memo on it as opposed to because we may not get back together for a while so if you can while it's fresh if you can just comment on the report that would be happy to do that. Do you want me to just speak to Senator Clark and comment or question? Sure. With regards to modernization so there are we received in the last appropriation three and a half million for phase one we're going through the RFP process right now. That being said there's an additional request for money coming in our upcoming whether it ends up being you know BAA two or the budget request I'll leave that to the to the agency of administration but there will be additional request for funding to support the rest of the modernization. I think what we're trying to make sure we do right now is we want to keep the train moving but we also don't want phase one to be out of step with phase two right so we want to make sure whatever we do in phase one is complementary to the other phases when we have funding assigned for those so we are going through the RFP process we've met with I don't even know how many different vendors over the past year and a half to see demos of different systems there's a there's a part of me that says you want the right system at the same time when you're looking at these systems that are you know current you know everything and anything looks better than what you have right now you know so but we've got some really talented subject matter experts and technologists that are involved in that process so I'm very confident in terms of our ability to move this forward but you'll see requests coming and can you just give us a notion if everything went according to Hoyle if everything went as smoothly as you'd like and we identified all the money what is the time frame. Yeah so to your point there are a couple factors if everything before the pandemic the average time frame I would say was roughly three years two to two to four so three was in the middle after the pandemic and the fact that everybody is looking to modernize their systems it's probably more like four or five years I think for us phase we'll do it in phases so it won't be a all you know and all done in five years we'll do phase we'll add some functionality to phase one if we can and we know we have funding set aside for other phases so I could see it being incremental so I think for us you know phase one is like the user interface what do what is the user experience and then there'll be some back end components to that but that's still probably 12 to 18 months by the time it's fully developed and tested and then deployed so I'll I'll ask a question here that you might expect I mean could you incorporate into phase one some benefit changes if we alerted you in advance to do that or is that technologically impossible but I would I would probably defer to to ADS but really for instance the way it's been designed phase one is just the claimant portal and the employer portal with some functionality about managing some adjudications work and some appeals work so what you're really talking about is the core system so I don't know whether that would be not till the end or somewhere along the way but it would not be part of phase one okay so I just I'll probably ask that question again during the session so if you can talk to ADS and get back to us on that I mentioned that I'm putting in a bill and it's sort of consistent to what the department's concerns were around the $25 it just says we should do that $25 when the computer can handle it and maybe try and find some other funding source in the interim I know you're opposed to that you know that's that bill is coming it may be introduced today so one thing before I let you go, Senator Brock you had a question right I'm sorry I part of my question has already been answered relative to the timetable I know that earlier in the summer the joint IT oversight committee reviewed as the legislation required your proposal to go forward and we did approve the initial piece and so I piggyback on the question that Senator Clarkson raised as far as the timetable of getting done to when you come back to us to have that better understanding as to whether you're on track with phase one based on what you told us earlier in the summer the second question though is a broader one and it goes to what you said to us previously that the existing system very very tenuous and the possibility of some sort of a catastrophic failure is a real one and so one of the things that I'm also interested in is what contingency planning exists because we now have this four to five year timeline for this to get fixed and if it is as bad as you have indicated to us previously I would like to understand is there a plan B is there a place to go instead of an army of people with paper pencils and carbon paper that would have to be put in place in the event that that worst case scenario did happen yeah and you probably just identified the worst case which would be reverting to paper claims which we would not want to do I'll defer some of that to the agency of digital services from the technology side because I know that they've added some additional components you know working with Blue Hill and our other data warehouse vendors on shoring up the the platform that the mainframe code sits on to make sure there's redundancy there so if there's you know we're unlikely to experience a hardware failure right now I think as long as we're not making changes to the system we're trying to you know reestablish some internal controls in the system and integrity in the system so that we have more faith in the calculations that are being done we have more faith in the determinations that are being issued all of that kind of goes hot haywire when you know we we start trying to make changes on the fly so you know Cameron if you want to speak to really what you've seen but because we're really reestablishing kind of the base system that was there before you know we're not experiencing the I would say the frequency of failures we are running into issues each and every day and every week but the potential for it going offline permanently is much less now because we're not we're kind of in repair mode as opposed to change mode Cameron do you want to add anything I wouldn't add a lot more to what you said commissioner I would just agree with your assessment there you know my you know now that we're not in the system making all these necessary changes related to these programs I think the risk for potential overall system failure is a lot less I know as you mentioned ADS has worked with our external partners to ensure that we have appropriate disaster recovery etc which I know they've done a lot to boost that and are continuing to do work even throughout this calendar year to help upgrade aspects of the mainframe in order to make it more stable and secure so there are things that they are doing to try to protect from that event and you know one of the concerns I have more is it's you know the lack of our ability to find qualified people to continue to maintain you know and that's why I think it's so important and a priority for us to get off the system as quickly as possible you know one day if a certain number of individuals unfortunate things happen to them they decide to leave employment etc it just becomes more and more difficult to find people qualified to make the necessary changes to operate the system that's also one of the big concerns so I would want ADS to come in and talk more specifically about in the event we had a disaster event what that looks like but I do know they've done a lot of work to help prevent that or have backup recovery example in those events. I was just going to say I mean the ability to back up to a previous date in time has been so that is a positive piece what I would say is if there was some catastrophic you know where all the system went down and all the backups were lost and then what would we do as a state you know I think in other states that have experienced major natural disasters you know they've had to rely on other states willingness to help process their claims and so the potential would be there for us to pull on our partner states to say can you help us process claims for Vermont claimants and I think there'd be a need from the legislature at that point to help probably relieve some of the state specific requirements because obviously the system would be geared towards you know processing claims under a different state statute for everything from eligibility to payment amount and so you know again it just I don't want to say the potential is not there that would be a worse case you know end of life situation but I think we were a long way from that given the system redundancies we have right now. And I would just very quickly at the very end I would just you know we it wasn't pretty and there were a lot of mistakes made and a lot of lessons learned but you know I think we demonstrated in the pandemic you know in a worse case scenario we you know first priority would be standing up some sort of web based system to just intake application and make payment you know and then we the priority number one would be to make sure people were not losing benefits and I think we could very quickly stand up something to be able to do that and then you begin to work backwards from there and you figure out what other states could do to help or is there a general system we could get off the shelf that we could just plug in without making the necessary adjustments to simply keep the lights on you know those would be the things that we would we would look at in that event that our mainframe system went down with zero capacity to bring it back on line. Senator Brock you look like you may have a follow up question. I just want to wind this up and just make one. Just just just the only concern is about contingency planning generally in terms of a recommendation is the time developed to contingency plan is not when the disaster happens. Right. So I just want to end by thanking you guys but also. Commissioner I want to ask you and also I just want to just address this I mean we've read a lot about why we have this workforce shortage but you're probably more knowledgeable and Secretary Currie more knowledgeable Vermont specific stuff. I just like to have you talk for a minute as to what you see it may be everything we've read but if you have any insight as to what's driving this workforce shortage. Yeah at a future date I'll I'll turn it over and I'll just dig down deeper but for the sake of time you know what we saw as part of the pandemic is Vermont's aging population leaving the workforce so people that were close to at retirement age or beyond retirement age that had stayed in the workforce chose that time to leave whether it was in their mind just the right time or whether it was health related concerns. We also have seen just a lot of churn that people took the opportunity of the pandemic to look at other careers and opportunities but as they did so they left a vacancy behind and so again that may have been probably to a lesser degree leaving the state more so obtaining skills or changing career paths which fill the spot in another area but left a vacancy somewhere else so the the challenge is not to go back to Vermont I was on a call yesterday with states from our National Association and they were all talking about what are we doing in the workforce area around workforce expansion to either get people back to work or in some cases where there just aren't enough workers in the states how are they attracting individuals to those states to work in those states so you know there's to be some people who are not doing their job. I think that's earlier about gig economy and flexibility with virtual work that has opened many doors but not every career or every job can be done remotely and that I think is where we see our biggest challenges whether it's in healthcare or services like childcare or leisure and hospitality you know those continue to be that matter continue to be the areas where we're seeing the the biggest gap in terms of available jobs and available people. Why manufacturing? Is manufacturing any different than retail? Only if it requires a different skill usually also the challenges are in terms of filling shifts because they're pretty defined but I don't want to speak from that but I think what we would identify as the challenges that the lag in demand and then the surge in product demand has caused them to actually expand so it's not even you know one they haven't been able to staff at normal levels but they've actually looked to increase staffing to keep up with production demand and that's what they wanted to and so that has been the challenge there. That's interesting. Okay we're going to let you guys go. What I want to talk about is committee process so we probably can go offline and thank you again we'll have you back. Thank you everyone. Appreciate it.